Associated Press photosJulianne McCrery, 42, of Irving, Texas, arrives in District Court Thursday in Portsmouth, N.H. McCrery was charged with killing her six-year-old son. McCrery is charged with asphyxiating her son, 6-year-old Camden Hughes, on Saturday in Hampton.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – Even as her son’s image was plastered across TV and computer screens nationwide while authorities worked to identify the little boy found dead along a dirt road in Maine, his mother dutifully called his Texas school daily to report his absence.

Julianne McCrery, 42, of Irving, Texas, was ordered held without bail Thursday on second-degree murder charges in New Hampshire, where she made her initial court appearance in the death of her son, 6-year-old Camden, after waiving extradition from Massachusetts.

Information offered by authorities and friends paint a portrait of a loving but troubled mother who suffered from mood swings that sometimes culminated in road trips – but she’d always come back.

This time, after one such trip to New England, she won’t be returning to Texas anytime soon.

A lawyer representing McCrery at a brief hearing in Massachusetts said that judging by conversations with his client, he thinks McCrery traveled hundreds of miles from home with the idea of taking her son’s life and committing suicide.

“I believe she was up here to bring both herself and her son to heaven,” Murphy said in Concord, Mass. “She told me, ‘I love my son very much. I know where he is. He’s in heaven. I want to go there as soon as possible.’”

The 6-year-old’s body was found Saturday in an isolated area in South Berwick, Maine, and state police were at a loss to identify him because no one had reported him missing. Police believe he was killed in Hampton, N.H.

The last day the boy attended school in Texas was Friday, May 6. The next Monday, his mother called to report that he was absent because he was ill, and she continued to call this week, saying he was still sick, said Pat Lamb, director of security for the Irving Independent School District.

Meanwhile, the case was drawing national attention as the boy went unidentified for days. State police in Maine distributed a picture of a boy with blond hair and blue eyes – an image taken of his corpse, but altered to show how he would have looked alive.

It’s extremely unusual for a missing child to go unreported. Similar cases happened only twice over the past two years, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Preliminary autopsy findings showed that Camden died of asphyxiation and was killed, according to Maine’s chief medical examiner. The homicide remains under investigation.

McCrery was detained Wednesday at a highway rest stop in Chelmsford, Mass., after police got a tip about her pickup truck, which matched a vehicle seen near the spot where the boy’s body was found covered with a blanket.

Her son died Saturday, the same day his body was discovered by a resident in Maine. Investigators believe Camden was killed that same day in Hampton, N.H., where he and his mother had stayed a night in a motel and checked out Saturday morning.

All the developments in New England occurred within 65 miles of one another.

After the New Hampshire court hearing, Senior Assistant Attorney General Susan Morrell said McCrery’s family was traveling to New England and will claim the boy’s body, which is in Augusta, Maine. She did not say which family members or when they would arrive.

“I think it’s just a tragic case. There’s not much more I can say right now,” said Monica Kaeser, McCrery’s public defender in New Hampshire.

Back in Texas, some of McCrery’s friends didn’t even know she and her son had left the modest mobile home she had bought for $5,000. But some of them say they wouldn’t have been overly alarmed because she sometimes disappeared.

She had done it before but always returned eventually. Just last fall, McCrery took her son out of kindergarten to travel to Seattle, said Shirley Miller, a longtime friend from Irving, Texas.

McCrery, known to friends as Julie, suffered from mood swings and sometimes would just “up and go” without telling anyone, Miller said.

“I would say she was a caring mother,” Miller said. “I don’t know why she did this unless she just flipped out.”

Like most people, the woman appears to have harbored both demons and accomplishments.

Texas public records show that she was arrested at least twice on prostitution charges and once for possession with intent to distribute drugs.

And Amazon.com features a book for sale by a woman named Julie McCrery about how to get a good night’s sleep, titled: “Good Night, Sleep Tight!” The biography says the author drove a school bus and operated a cement mixer. Her latest job, according to court records in Massachusetts, was as an “auto parts delivery contractor” in Texas.

Miller said that she baby-sat for Camden about two weeks ago and that he was wearing the same clothes he had on when his body was found in Maine. She said the clothes were brand new.

“Why did she leave him beside the road? I cannot get past that. That does not seem like her,” she said. “I know she probably did it, but I can’t get past why.”

Lamb described McCrery’s son as “a gifted and talented” kindergartner at W.T. Hanes Elementary School in Irving. Grief counselors were on hand to assist children and staff as news of his death spread on 600-student campus, Lamb said.

“He was a really bright student,” Lamb said. “His teachers described him as a sponge who loved to learn.”